Thomas Longridge Gooch was civil engineer

Civil engineer

A civil engineer is a person who practices civil engineering; the application of planning, designing, constructing, maintaining, and operating infrastructures while protecting the public and environmental health, as well as improving existing infrastructures that have been neglected.Originally, a...

 of the Manchester and Leeds Railway

Manchester and Leeds Railway

The Manchester and Leeds Railway was a railway company in the United Kingdom which opened in 1839, connecting Manchester with Leeds via the North Midland Railway which it joined at Normanton....

 from 1831 to 1844.

Biography

Gooch was born on 1 November 1808. He was the eldest son of John and Anna Gooch; John was from Bedlington

Bedlington

Bedlington is a town in Northumberland, to the north of the Tyne and Wear urban area. It lies north of Newcastle and southeast of the county town of Morpeth. Other nearby places include Ashington to the north northeast, Blyth to the east and Cramlington to the south.The parish of Bedlington...

, Northumberland, and Anna was the daughter of Thomas Longridge of Newcastle. John and Anna had ten children, and of their five sons, four became railway engineers: Thomas Longridge Gooch; John Viret Gooch

John Viret Gooch

John Viret Gooch was the locomotive superintendent of the London and South Western Railway from 1841 to 1850. He was the brother of Sir Daniel Gooch, 1st Baronet , who was the first Locomotive Superintendent of the Great Western Railway from 1837 to 1864 and its Chairman from 1865 to...

; Daniel Gooch

Daniel Gooch

Sir Daniel Gooch, 1st Baronet was an English railway and transatlantic cable engineer and Conservative politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1865 to 1885...

and William Frederick Gooch.

On 6 October 1823, Gooch was apprenticed for six years to George Stephenson

George Stephenson

George Stephenson was an English civil engineer and mechanical engineer who built the first public railway line in the world to use steam locomotives...

; with Stephenson, he surveyed the Newcastle and Carlisle Railway

Newcastle and Carlisle Railway

The Newcastle and Carlisle Railway, occasionally referred to as the Tyne Valley Line, is a railway line in northern England. The line was built in the 1830s, and links the city of Newcastle upon Tyne in Tyne and Wear with in Cumbria. Formal opening took place on 18 June 1838.The line follows the...

 and for years from 1826 acted as Stephenson's secretary and draughtsman on the Liverpool and Manchester Railway

Liverpool and Manchester Railway

The Liverpool and Manchester Railway was the world's first inter-city passenger railway in which all the trains were timetabled and were hauled for most of the distance solely by steam locomotives. The line opened on 15 September 1830 and ran between the cities of Liverpool and Manchester in North...

 (L&MR), living in Stephenson's house in Liverpool. In January 1829, Gooch became Resident Engineer for the Liverpool end of the L&MR, but in April the same year he took a temporary appointment as Resident Engineer of the Bolton and Leigh Railway

Bolton and Leigh Railway

The Bolton and Leigh Railway was the first public railway in the historic county of Lancashire, England. It opened in 1828 for goods.-History:...

.

In 1830, Stephnson was appointed to survey the route of the proposed Manchester and Leeds Railway

Manchester and Leeds Railway

The Manchester and Leeds Railway was a railway company in the United Kingdom which opened in 1839, connecting Manchester with Leeds via the North Midland Railway which it joined at Normanton....

, and Gooch was appointed his assistant. Gooch carried out most of the actual surveying for the new line, and was in charge of the construction.